Cod Almighty | Diary
If it is perfect, it isn't Grimsby Town
19 August 2019
Trentside Diary writes: Miss Guest Diary will be happy with midweek matches coming thick and fast at the moment. Spare a thought for us exiles who rarely manage to get to a midweek game but at least encourage a friend who has a free evening to go with the offer of a ticket.
Tomorrow’s match means that after Saturday we’ll be five matches in and legitimately allowed to look at the league table. I get a bit obsessed by checking where we were after the same number of matches during the previous season compared to the current one. Not that I’m a statto but it gives a feel for how the team stacks up compared to last year. For reference after three games last season (yes I know, I looked) we had L-W-D and so had exactly the same number of points as now. This year feels so very different though.
For a start nobody has a 100 per cent record after only three matches so this could be a very interesting league. There are usually a couple of clubs who are obvious for automatic promotion with three or four more scrabbling for the final place but it’s not looking like that yet. Quite a few Town fans are reasonably happy with what they’ve seen on the pitch and are allowing this to play out rather than having a go at players and calling for the manager to be sacked.
There are the usual idiots on the Fishy but it would be the end of normal service if there weren’t. Being generous, some will give the manager until October. I can’t believe it, but then again maybe I'm not surprised to be writing this after three matches. No Michael Jolley isn’t "out of his depth". Things are progressing quite nicely on the pitch and with both the draw and Saturday's loss, they were tight matches that could have gone either way.
Last season we were about to go on a six-match losing streak that left us with five points after ten games. We never got a sustained good run going, with shoots of optimism being chopped down after every three or four matches. Call me naïve or over-optimistic but I don't see that happening this year.
On a totally different track, I hope they never introduce VAR into the fourth division. I can't hope that my team never play in a higher league but it would destroy much of the pleasure for me if VAR was a regular element of our matches. How could you ever have that sheer exuberance of celebrating a goal knowing that it could be disallowed minutes later for the tiniest perceived infringement that nobody saw at the time? It's been introduced to placate the big money at the top.
As soon as they say it will only be used for "clear and obvious errors", you know it will never really work. When was there ever an official at a match, or now watching remotely, who didn't feel the need to justify their existence? As Paul Thundercliffe writes, VAR sucks dry the essence of what is it to be human and a football fan.
It is the same mentality seen in photos of the crowd at Old Trafford or Anfield, where there are as many people filming as actually watching when their team has just scored. Life and football give us joy and frustration, swings and roundabouts. If we wanted perfection we wouldn't be supporting our fourth division, local club when there are more successful teams out there. UTM!